Just About Travelhttp://www.justabouttravel.net
Reviews and travel advice
Thu, 21 Mar 2019 08:25:59 +0000 en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.1You’ve all done very well!http://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/21/youve-all-done-very-well/
Thu, 21 Mar 2019 06:27:01 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186942This is
the time of the year when home countries celebrate tourism.
An old and new Scottish tourist attraction; the new V&A Dundee and the RSS Discovery

Usually
they take the form of tourism weeks when the industry discusses practical
issues like VAT reductions for tourism products, recruiting staff and where
replacement people for returning EU citizens might come from. Elected
representatives are invited along to say how wonderful and important tourism is
and how tourist works are doing a great job.

A week or
so later, most of this is forgotten and the news reports are as stale as last
week’s loaf of bread.

The first
“week” of this tourism clambake season is in Scotland where they are in the
middle of a tourism month. As part of this navel gazing, there was a debate in
the Scottish parliament so Just about Travel sat down with the
Hansard equivalent to see if anything useful for us holidaymakers and
travellers emerged from event. Just eleven members spoke plus Fiona Hyslop, the
minister responsible for tourism.

Many
MP’s just plugged tourist spots, café’s and outlets in their constituencies but
that is of little interest to readers.

Although
Fiona Hyslop’s speech was the last of the debate there was a bit more meat in
her comments than in many of the eleven. It was she who pointed out that
although there had been a 3% growth on visitor spend this wasn’t keeping up
with the rise in visitor numbers. What she wants is for us to spend more when
we visit Scotland and to “spend in the appropriate places and in the
appropriate ways.” I’ll let readers
puzzle out precisely what she wants us to do.

She
pointed out that because of rising costs in tourism have exceeded 3% in many
cases, businesses connected with or in tourism were under real pressure. All is
not as rosy as some MSP’s were pointing out. That tourism had over 11% of the
workforce made up of EU citizens presented another issue. Where would future
workers be found if EU citizens left?

As
for the future she referred to a marketing campaign to encourage us to visit
the south of Scotland and that work was under way on a new tourism strategy.

When
opening the debate, Stuart McMillan let us know that the McLean Museum was now
called the Watt Museum (in honour of 2019 being the 200th anniversary
of the death of James Watt) and reminded us that the transient visitor levy
(accommodation tax) would not come in before 2021 as was announced by Fiona
Hyslop a few days earlier. Hyslop didn’t mention this in her speech.

McMillan
also pointed out that some camper van tourists were leaving bags of human waste
by the side of the road and something needed to be done. I don’t know that I
really wanted to know this but if true then camper van tourists should hang
their heads in shame at such behaviour.

Patrick
Harvie raised an issue not just common to Scotland; that of residential flats
being used largely as commercial lets and depriving locals of housing. This is
something that all holidaymakers should be aware of when booking accommodation
as it sours relations between visitors and locals. It has led to demonstrations
in places like Barcelona and legislation in some places to limit for how long
rooms/flats/houses are let.

Visitors who have passed through Coatbridge or avoided it might be heartened by the local MSP – Fulton MacGregor – who put forward a case for visiting the area. It made a change from those MSP’s who had well-known tourist haunts in their constituencies and were happy to talk of those whereas what is needed in Scotland – as everywhere else – are other tourist draws to try and spread the benefits of tourism.

But apart from these contributions, for the visitor there wasn’t much to learn. We did learn that nearly every speaker was congratulatory of the industry. In the comment of young Mr Grace in the old sitcom, Are You Being Served, “You’ve all done very well!”

]]>Tourism or trade?http://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/20/tourism-or-trade/
Wed, 20 Mar 2019 05:02:15 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186939The port of Dublin plans to reduce
the number of cruise ships calling at Dublin from about 160 that will dock this
year to 80 in 2021. Last year 150 ships carrying 1,827, 674 passengers stopped
over in Dublin.
Port of Dublin. Image – Dublin Port Company

Many destinations would move heaven
and earth to attract more cruise ships yet Dublin is suggesting the opposite. Is
it due to tourist pollution in the centre of Dublin?

No. It’s due to Brexit! Or is it?

When the UK leaves the EU, the Dublin Port Company says that it needs to have more room for handling containers and freight traffic. Situated on an island, all freight has to come by either air (which can be expensive) or sea. At the moment there is a lot of freight traffic across the Northern Irish border with no hindrance but after Brexit there may be delays so many companies will ship directly to Irish ports to avoid that issue. Those ships have to dock somewhere so, the logic goes, reducing the number of cruise ships will make more docking facilities available for container ships and more space to store and process the freight until it is moved.

Needless to say the cruise companies
aren’t happy and nor is the Irish government judging from some recent comments
by deputy head of the government, Simon Coveney. The Fianna Fáil leader Micheál
Martin, suggested that other ports in Ireland will suffer as well. Oddly enough
that is pretty much what the cruise industry said.

The port needs more infrastructure, the company says, so is this announcement anything more than playing politics to get money to subsidise its expansion? Even now it plans to raise prices by a third to docking cruise liners by increasing both the cost of each passenger travelling on a ship and by the tonnage of the ship. When it developed its master plan in 2012 – long before Brexit ever reared its head – considerable growth was foreshadowed. But in June 2018 when it had updated its plan, Brexit wasn’t even mentioned in the 43 point Executive Summary as having any effect on its plans.

It does say, in point 20 “The main
attraction of the cruise industry is the generation of significant revenues for
the Dublin region – the actual
contribution to DPC’s revenues is not significant. Accordingly the Port could
part fund the development but
additional funding would be needed from other sources…”

It looks to me as through the cruise ship reduction plan is part of the overall plan to get more outside funding after all. And Brexit is a good excuse to use.

]]>Meals on planeshttp://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/19/meals-on-planes/
Tue, 19 Mar 2019 03:26:22 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186936I’m not a fan of airline food. I
speak as an economy class passenger rather than someone who is more accustomed
to the meals served in business or first class which, I am told are much better
than are served in the back of a plane.
a salt beef roll

Consequently I have a habit of taking
my own food. I have even been known to share this with the cabin crew,
particularly on American Airlines where the food – this is going back more than
ten years – seemed the same on every trip I ever made with them.

Aware that food can sometimes taste
differently on land as opposed to being 35,000 feet in the air, Stansted
airport has come up with a sandwich which, it claims tastes better at altitude.
It is aimed at people like me who are either unwilling to pay for meals on
flights or reject the taste of them and prefer to take their own.

In conjunction with Not Always Caviar
– the food outlet – and based on scientific food research into the body’s
reduced ability to perceive flavours when flying, the new sandwich will include
Umami-rich ingredients. Umami, the fifth taste after sweet, sour, salty and
bitter is the key, it seems, to making it taste better in the air.

Here’s the scientific logic as
espoused by Professor Barry C Smith who had a hand in the development of the
sandwich. He says, “Science
shows that the combination of dry air and low-pressure during flights reduces
our sensitivity to food aromas. Additionally, the sound of white noise at 80
decibels or above has an impact on the brain’s ability to perceive sweet, salt
and sour from the tongue – reducing its intensity by about 10-15%. In an
aircraft cabin you are subjected to white noise of around 89 decibels. This
will greatly reduce the flavours we can taste whilst flying. “Foods rich in
umami provide depth of flavour and boost other basic tastes like salt, sweet
and sour. Umami is also immune to the effects of white noise on our perception
of taste.” So now you know!

But there has to be more to it than
the umami effect. A typical umami mixture would be mushrooms with tomato and
cheese yet airlines have been serving up pasta dishes for years and I can’t say
that I would award five stars for any I have eaten. No, I must be in the
cooking as well which could be where Stansted and not Always caviar might be on
to a winner.

]]>Beds for economy class passengershttp://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/18/beds-for-economy-class-passengers/
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:35:54 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186924As
a fairly regular long haul passenger, I suffer from a “dead backside,” that
numbness that affects you from napping (you can’t really call it sleeping) in
an upright position.
a simple solution and one which many of us have used if we were lucky enough to have empty, adjacent seats

As seats seem to get smaller and leg distancefrom the seat in front of you gets narrower, finding a comfortable position to doze whilst travelling in economy class seems to be more difficult. Gone are the days when you could lay on the floor by the exit doors and snooze. Health and safety rules have put an end to that.

Of
course if you splurge the budget and fly in business or first class you get a
flat or flatish bed these days. But most of us still travel in economy and what
do we get?

Thomas Cook Airlines have come up with answer for economy class passengers. From May 13th they will have “sleeper seats” on long-haul flights. A “sleeper seat” is defined as a roll-out mattress, fitted sheet and pillow which are placed on top of a row of three seats, turning them into a narrow bed. Thomas Cook says that the beds are suitable for passengers up to 5’11” tall and over the age of 12. It might be like a bunk or camp bed but it is better than the alternative.

Obviously
the airline cannot have that many seats available to convert into beds
otherwise it would be cost prohibitive. In fact they have just four per flight and
for each of them you will have to pay an additional £200 on top of the normal
economy ticket price.

Booking
is already open for these “sleeper seats” and you will find them listed on
Thomas Cook Airlines’ website under ancillaries.

Now
that Thomas Cook has dipped its toes in the water how long will it be before
TUI, Jet 2 and Norwegian introduce flat beds on their long-haul flights.

Will
more traditional airlines such as British Airways and Virgin Atlantic consider
the possibility of economy class flat beds?

]]>What is more important? A cruise company or the passenger?http://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/17/what-is-more-important-a-cruise-company-or-the-passenger/
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 06:58:44 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186921On
the face of it there is a spat between the authorities on the Caribbean island
of Antigua and the biggest cruise company in the world, Carnival.
Carnival Ecstasy. Image – Andy Newman/Carnival Cruise Lines.

Gaston
Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda recently criticised the Florida-Caribbean
Cruise Association suggesting that they exploit the Caribbean by charging
passengers thousands and giving the countries at which the cruise ships dock,
peanuts.

Shortly afterwards, carnival said that its cruise ships would not be stopping Antigua from November onwards depriving the country of about a quarter of a million visitors.

The
reason?

According
to Carnival, its ships would dock in ports that were more welcoming.

Is
this a coincidence or is Carnival exacting revenge for Browne’s comments?

Far
be it for me to suggest an answer given the distance from which I write but it
seems that the passenger is being neglected.

If
I had booked a cruise I would rather it visited the ports as advertised and
which had prompted me to book it rather than re-route the vessel taking me
somewhere I might not want to go? Would I be offered a refund as the cruise
line was breaking its contract with me by not delivering that for which I had
paid or would it hide behind the small print which probably says that changes
of port may be necessary due to circumstances?

It
is hard to believe that this state of play has come about because of the
comments of an elected official

Given
what seems to be rather childish attitude of Carnival, I wonder about the
outcome. Will passengers rebel and cancel existing bookings or book with
another company? Or is a cruise more important than the ports at which it
calls? As long as it calls somewhere does one destination matter over another?

Will
other cruise companies which are members of this association follow suit? And
if they did what effect would that have on passengers and the countries affected?

]]>St Patrick’s Festivalhttp://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/16/st-patricks-festival/
Sat, 16 Mar 2019 03:22:17 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186930Although St Patrick’s Day is tomorrow, we are right in the middle of the four-day St Patrick’s Festival in Dublin.
St Patrick’s Day parade. Image – Visit Dublin

Regardless of what happens this afternoon at the National Stadium in Cardiff, Irish around the world will celebrate St Patrick’s Day tomorrow enjoying themselves whether Ireland won or lost. Earlier this year the festival won Best Festival / Event Experience at theIrish Tourism Industry Awards 2019.

To non-Irish mortals it seems that St
Patrick’s Day takes over the world. Rivers and lakes are died green for the
day, buildings have green lights and it seems that more and more buildings
around the world each year helping to proclaim Ireland and Irishness as a big
influence on the world.

The festival however, which is over
twenty years old, began as a one day event and now has grown to five. Today
alone there will be thirty two different events being held including the
greening of the city which begins as darkness falls at around about six pm.

Tomorrow, the big day itself, has the
traditional parade which will begin at midday at Parnell Square North and wend
through the streets until its eventual conclusion at the junction of Kevin and
Wexford streets. Amongst those in the parade will be a theme of climate change
devised by two groups, Walk the Plank and No Eyed Theatre. They have
support from groups coming not just from Ireland and the UK but Ireland,
Brazil, Lithuania, Philippines, Bolivia, Peru, China & India.

After the parade many visitors will finish in Merrion Square where, from two until six, the festival village will have, in the organisers words, “events, fun adventures and glorious food, featuring a Gaeltacht area, Céilí Mór, circus and science shows, children’s readings and discos, live music, village hall talks, street theatre, world food stalls and much more.”

But the “village” isn’t only there on
the Sunday. You can visit it today as well.

Whilst the rest of the world takes a
hand in celebrating St Patrick’s Day, Ireland still is where the celebrations
will be the most vibrant. And if you are in Ireland then the festival in Dublin
is where you should be.

]]>Parc Astérix is 30 and Astérix is 60http://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/15/parc-asterix-is-30-and-asterix-is-60/
Fri, 15 Mar 2019 06:12:58 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186895As long as I can remember, Astérix and his bumbling crony Obélix
have been around. Sixty years ago this October, René Goscinny and Albert
Uderzo created the famous Gaul who harried Roman armies and, since then
nearly 400 million copies of the books have been sold.
Image: Parc Astérix

Whilst the appeal originally might have been meant for children,
older children (well into their fifties, sixties and seventies) are fans as well.

With such a success it isn’t surprising that it turned into many
films and in 1969, thirty years ago, a theme park built around the characters
was created some twenty miles north of Paris.

Parc Astérix has 47 attractions and shows set in six worlds. (Gaul, the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, the Vikings, Travel Through Time and Egypt). To celebrate the 30th anniversary the owners have a new attraction, Attention Menhir! which has been inspired by immersion cinema. There is a 4D animated film, in a new 300-seat theatre, Les Studios Idéfix. After travelling through the Babaorum’s Camp, visitors take place in dynamic seats and become spectators of a unique story, full of bouncing, soaring, water, wind, smells and so on!

Other attractions include OzIris, the ancient Egyptian attraction, Goudurix,
the roller coaster with 7 loop the loops; excitement for Young Gauls in the
Forêt d’Idéfix along with thrills and spills for all the family on the Pégase
Express ride!

Needless to see the cartoon characters are out and about so you will see Astérix,
Obélix, Panoramix, Vitalstatistix, Panacea and Impedimenta. In addition, Numerobis,
the Vikings, the Greeks and a Roman patrol will also be strolling around
various parts of the attraction. There’ll also be a new magic show to enjoy at
Panoramix Theatre.

For the coming season, Parc Astérix opens in three weeks’ time, on the 6th
of April, remaining open until November.

On feature that it will include in the future is
to alter the way that the awards are judged. Local tourist areas (eighteen in
all) have their awards and the winners graduate to the England awards. In the
past if you haven’t had an awards scheme in your area you weren’t able to
enter. That has changed for Visit England will support destinations that do not
currently hold local competitions to launch Awards of their own, giving greater
coverage across England.

There are three new awards. They are 2019-20
include ‘Experience of the Year’, ‘International Tourism Award’ and ‘New
Tourism Business Award.’ These join the others making fifteen in all.

The awards are meant to reward quality, innovation and best practice across the country’s tourism industry. But if you look at the fifteen there is one glaring omission. There is not a single award for customer satisfaction or service.

It seems that innovation and excellence does not
include customer satisfaction yet many holidaymakers and visitors would tell you
that customer service is the one reason why people return to the same place or
even recommend it. Good service leads to satisfaction, not the same as loyalty
I grant you, but nonetheless important to reinforcing loyalty.

Visit England might argue that all the awards have
an element of customer inherent because otherwise how would organisations and companies
operate successfully.

Fifty years ago market research companies made the
bulk of their money buy surveying what people thought. In the 1990’s onwards
they began to see more money from operating customer satisfaction studies. These
were a method of what liked or didn’t like or a way of measuring the degree to
which people agreed or disagreed with comments set by the research house.

Today, the University of Michigan operates a
significant project called the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The author
of that project – Claes Fornell – has demonstrated that customer satisfaction
can influence share price movements of quoted companies. Net promotor scores,
beloved of chief executives in large companies, are based on satisfaction and
what holidaymaker has not completed a holiday satisfaction form?

Yet Visit England still has not found it necessary to introduce an award for customer satisfaction despite many other tourism bodies operating such an award.

The full list of awards will be

1. B&B and Guest House of the Year
2. Small Hotel of the Year
3. Large Hotel of the Year
4. Camping, Glamping and Holiday Park of the Year
5. Self-Catering Accommodation of the Year
6. Small Visitor Attraction of the Year
7. Large Visitor Attraction of the Year
8. Pub of the Year
9. Experience of the Year
10. New Tourism Business Award
11. Taste of England Award
12. Accessible and Inclusive Tourism Award
13. Business Events Venue of the Year
14. Ethical, Responsible and Sustainable Tourism Award
15. International Tourism Award

]]>Airports winning for customer servicehttp://www.justabouttravel.net/2019/03/13/airports-winning-for-customer-service/
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 10:19:12 +0000http://www.justabouttravel.net/?p=186911Yesterday, Just about Travel looked at how well
British and Irish airports managed in the recently announced ACI (Airports
Council International) Airport Service Quality Awards.
Punta Cana: the airport won a top award for customer service

Most airline passengers in the UK and Ireland would be
domestic or European flyers so how did European airports fare in the awards?

In the category for airports which have less than two
million passengers, Spanish airports did well with only Skopje in Macedonia
breaking their clean sweep. Almeria, Girona on the Costa Brava, Melila and
Zaragoza all won.

The next category was the two to five million category
and, apart from London City and Southampton, Tallinn and Zagreb airports took
the other awards.

Alicante, Bergen, Keflavik in Iceland, Sochi in Russia,
Luqa in Malta and Porto collected awards joining Newcastle and Bristol airports
in the five to fifteen million passengers’ category.

Athens, Helsinki and Prague were the winners in the next
category which was airports with between fifteen and twenty-five million
passengers.

Dublin was joined by Oslo-Gardemoen and Zurich in the
next category whilst in the very largest airports – those with over forty
million passengers a year, the two winners were Rome Fiumicino and Sheremetyevo
in Moscow.

There are no awards for Schipol in Amsterdam, Charles de
Gaulle in Paris nor Frankfurt in Germany, all airports which have many regional
flights from UK and Irish airports.

But some of the most popular airports for holidaymakers
such as Alicante, Malaga, Palma, those in the Canary Islands and Faro in the
Algarve are not winners. Further afield, airports like Orlando International
and Sanford in Florida failed to win but at least Punta Cana in the Dominican
Republic which sees about 180,000 British tourists every year won in the
category of airports with five to fifteen million passengers a year.

The awards
are given as part of ACI’s survey for customer experience. ASQ delivers 640,000
individual surveys per year in 47 languages across 91 countries. Passengers are
asked at departure or arrival for their views. His is probably the most
representative of what passengers think since ACI has 646 members, operating
1,960 airports in 176 countries. Having said that, not all members are part of
the survey programme, the biggest group not participating in the UK being
Manchester Airport Group which owns Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands
airports.

In the awards for those airports
in Europe, London City and Southampton airports won awards in the category for
those airlines carrying between two and five million passengers per year. Bristol
and Newcastle airports won awards in the five to fifteen million passenger
category in Europe. Dublin won the top award in the 25-40 million passengers
category.

No other British or Irish airport was listed.

This year, ACI added some further categories. There were also awards for
ambience in airports, customer care based on the quality of the customer
service received by those surveyed, and airports with the highest in customer
facilities.

In these categories not one British or Irish airport was listed. In fact
no European airport was listed either. All the awards were won by airports in
the Indian sub-continent or the Far East.

On top of this, Kempegowda International Airport,
Bangalore in, India, has won the first ever ASQ Arrivals Award, based on the
new Arrivals Survey. It is the first airport in the world to win a Departures
and an Arrivals award.

Given that each airport has an allotted number of
surveys to run in order that the results are as fair as possible and not skewed
to those gaining the highest number of responses, readers should ask themselves
why British, Irish and other European airports do so badly in comparison with
those in the Asia.